Can you safely rig trees with kretz?

[Steve Bullman]

nice unit, whats the reach?

[Marula]

23m working Reach, the basket takes 280kilos on full stretch. It makes for a comfortable day, gets stuff down in no time.

[Gary Prentice]

On 25/02/2018 at 13:48, jfc said:

I tend to lead from the front with anything dodgy.

So are you still assuming that it is dodgy, without any further investigation?

 

 

[Martin du Preez]

hard to judge from the pic but can't it just be felled through the hedge on the right? give the farmer a bottle of gin? 

 

[MattyF]

Safe bloc and double pulley rigging would be a good idea for the negative rigging.
I still find conventional rigging with a pre tensioned line and a cradle barely puts any load on the tree unlike Butt or tip rigged sections.
Have rigged out plenty of kretz beech in the past and never had one fail, my view is by the time you have got to the point where heavy negative rigging may be needed most of the Tree will be on the deck any way decreasing the chance of leverage failure ,just going carefully at it there should be no problems... I suppose if you can get a mewp in though it would be the safer bet .. and easier every time.

[jfc]

Hi Guys,

I will try and get back to see the tree again when I am doing the other work on the site. Might have more ideas on second viewing.

I shall take a drill and long bit - not done that before - bored in with a saw before when felling but that sounds better.

 

If I need a mewp Stefan P - said he was getting one, anyone heard from him lately ? - he has done stumps for me a few times.

 

Might have found an excuse to buy a safebloc. More toys!

 

Cheers,

jan.

 

[Treerover]

Let us not forget that Kretz affects the roots as much, if not more, than the main stem, so a drill test is far from infallible and could be argued MAY give you false confidence .
One thing I would say which hasn’t been mentioned, especially with a broad canopied species such as beech with very heavy timber, is if you’re worried about stability of the stem or root plate , take the tree down in a balanced symmetrical manner.
I always will try to even up the load balance of the limbs around the canopy as I dismantle it if the tree is really dodgy.
Sometimes such trees are virtually balancing themselves with their canopies without much help from the root plate .
Bias this load too much and you could potentially be heading for problems .
Yes I, like others have dismantled and rigged a great many trees affected by Kretz or Ustulina as it used to be called and live to tell the tale, but those that may have got it wrong probably aren’t here to write about it !!!!

[Carl1991]

Anything else to rig off? Failing that +1 for powerful saw (661 25" bar) and get them off without shaking her. I've only done 2 removals with kretz, small if rigging brought pole down off mewp. The other was a cut and drop. What's the area below can't you free fall?